M'sia-S'pore relationship not affected by new submission to ICJ

KEPALA BATAS: The diplomatic relationship between Malaysia and Singapore will not be affected with the federal government recently submitting new documents to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to revise its judgements on Pedra Branca/ Pulau Batu Puteh.
Foreign Affairs deputy minister Datuk Seri Reezal Merican Naina Merican said the submission will not give any impact to the diplomatic relationship.
The trading business between both nations is increasing. We submitted new documents because we discovered new facts over the Pedra Branca matter," he told reporters after handing aids to 100 pupils aged between seven and 11-years at the Kepala Batas parliamentary constituency.
Reezal Merican, who is also Kepala Batas MP, added that although the ICJ's verdict judged that Singapore had sovereignty over Pedra Branca in 2008, Malaysia was allowed to reopen the Pedra Brance case if they met ICJ's conditions of submitting new documents to the court within 10 years.
Therefore, he said the federal government had requested to revise the Pedra Brance case in accordance with international laws as it wants to defend the sovereignty of Malaysia.
Meanwhile, Bernama reported that Singapore will study the documents brought forth by Malaysia as part of the latter's application to the ICJ o revise its judgement on ownership of the island of Pulau Batu Puteh (Pedra Branca).
Channel NewsAsia reported late Saturday that Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam said he had seen the documents and that a legal team would study the documents and respond accordingly.
Shanmugam said Malaysia would have to satisfy a number of conditions before the court, according to the report.
The new facts which prompted Malaysia to apply for a revision of the ICJ ruling on Pulau Batu Puteh were found in three documents discovered in the National Archives of the United Kingdom.
The ICJ, in a press release on its website on Friday, said the documents included an internal correspondence of the Singapore colonial authorities in 1958, an incident report filed in 1958 by a British naval officer and an annotated map of naval operations from the 1960s.
The documents were discovered in the National Archives between Aug 4, 2016, and Jan 30, 2017, it said.